Jewish Flesh and Christian Spirit in Athanasius of Alexandria

This paper examines Athanasius' construction of the Jews as symbols of difference within the Christian community, specifically as the embodiment of the particularity or locality of heresy ("flesh") in opposition to the catholicity or universality of orthodoxy ("spirit"). Athanasius developed his notion of Judaism as particularity during his efforts to reform the Alexandrian (local) practices of Lent and Easter along more international (catholic) lines. Anti-Jewish rhetoric served to stigmatize Christians who resisted these efforts. Once in place, the model of Jewish fleshliness could be applied to other "heretical" Christians, especially the Arians, whose biblical hermeneutic was allegedly characterized by a similar attention to the local at the expense of the global. The rhetorical contrast of fleshly particularity with spiritual universality was, in its Athanasian incarnation, one ideological aspect of the fourth-century project of creating a "catholic" Church.